History Made Here

I had some incredibly great luck recently in the family history research on the Nevins side of the family! 

Many years ago while researching in Olean, I came across a notebook in the public library that contained a number of local biographies.  This was among them and I thought I had hit the jackpot.  At the time, I knew almost nothing about Henry Nevins (our great grandfather--Nanny's father).  This piece of hand-typed onion paper with a 3 hole punch out of that notebook provided HUGE clues for me to follow and I was ecstatic.

But then I noticed a few discrepancies--especially with dates-- and I have no idea how this Citizens Historical Association got its information.  In particular, I saw that Henry's father John was noted to have been born in Canada (not Ireland as I thought) and that he had lived in the Lockport area as a grocer for some time before he settled in the Ellicottville area.    I have searched all these years since for some kind of evidence that John was born in Kingston Canada and lived in Lockport NY for a time. 

And then, almost accidentally, I found it!  New York State conducted a census halfway between the federal census years several times:  1855, 1865, 1875 for example.  I had John Nevins well documented in census and other records from 1860 forward--all in the Ellicottville area.  Until the other night, up popped the NY 1855 census and there was John in Lockport with his MOTHER Mary, sister Catherine and two children that belonged to a brother.  He appeared to be a "grocerman"

This verified what the Citizens Historical Association published and gave me clear evidence that John had at least one brother.  Nanny claimed there were a bunch of brothers, but I've never found them either.

This monument is in the Holy Cross cemetery in Ellicottville.  Listed on the other side are twins Matty and Christy Nevins who died of diptheria when they were about 6-- great grandfather Henry is their brother (and HA--we have twins in our line!).  I've suspected, hoped, wondered, prayed that this Mary might be John's mother.  Now I know it is and I feel like an open book has been closed.  I will presume John's father Henry was dead by the time John found himself in Lockport around 1852.

Some days you are the teflon and some days you are the velcro.  Sometimes things just go smoothly and sometimes they get sticky.  I was TEFLON this same day because I also found John's future wife in 1855 in the city of Rochester--this was a complete surprise.  Julia Fisher, 19, was documented in Rochester in 1855 with her father John, her mother Ann and her brother Christopher.  The image is very hard to read and I can't tell much from it but they are clearly there --ever so close to the Nevins family!  For some reason each family migrated to Ellicottville and that's where history was made starting in 1866 when John and Julia married.

Work hard enough and long enough and sometimes the pieces fall into place.  Ahhhhh.....

Wicked Tuna hits close to home

The new season of Wicked Tuna is scheduled to start next Sunday February 16.  We follow that series pretty closely and Jim likes to see if he can match up the docks and boats to something familiar from our visits.  We also just like to hear the fishermen talk.  That distinct Massachusetts/Boston/Gloucester-speak is something we miss --we also now miss hearing the Irish brogue but that's a different story for a different day.

Turns out we have a second cousin who will appear this season with his vessel The Lily.  I think the third episode "Into the Storm" is the one you might want to watch on Sunday March 2.  This is the link to the NatGeo TV website about that episode with some pictures. 

Capt Billy "Hollywood" Muniz is a grandson to our "Aunt Eleanor" Pierce.  Some of you might just barely remember Aunt Eleanor--most of you probably remember her being referred to by Timothy, Peter or Dad.

This is Aunt Eleanor with Barbara Pierce from the 1992 reunion.  I believe the lady on the left is Eleanor as she seems to have the recognizable Pierce features.  Barbara is a "no-blood" :) 

I was telling Paula that we had a cousin appearing on Wicked Tuna and she asked me how I tracked that down.  I really led her down the wrong path in giving her the wrong name and the wrong story.  Sorry, Paula--how I tracked this down was actually from some handwritten notes I had taken during our October visit.  I always try to be prepared, but when Uncle Tim starts telling stories or dropping hints, sometime I have to scramble to find paper and pen.  Sometimes it's after some libations.  Often it is during libations.  In this case, my notes get a little shaky BUT he clearly noted that Eleanor's daughter Carole had two children and that he thought Billy Muniz was a fisherman with his own boat.  I kind of remembered seeing the Muniz name in the Good Morning Gloucester blog, so off I went searching for him.  Lo and Behold: Wicked Tuna, Season 3!

Capt Billy is involved in some fishing initiatives including the Large Pelagics Research Center and the Northeast Consortium Collarborative Research Project (wow that's a mouthful) and that's how I found this picture.  I believe he's the big guy third from the right.  Watch for him and our very brief 2 degrees of separation from fame!

Be Kind to James Day??

It's a valuable exercise to review old documents for new information, especially when researching family history.  Sometimes you find new and interesting tidbits of information.  Sometimes you don't, but it's still fun to look.  This is one of those stories, except some of it may be news to you.

This is a copy of Weenie's birth certificate.  It can be considered an official document because it has a raised seal.  I think you already know he was born in Emporium PA and that his parents were Patrick Flynn and Barbara Lippman.  Though, take note here, that his mother is listed as "Barbetta Lypmann".  It's the only time I've seen her referred to as Barbetta but I need to remember to keep that in mind for future research.  Other than Barbara, I've seen her listed at Betty a couple of times. 

One very important item to look at when reviewing such documents is the date it was issued.  In this case, this appears to have been issued June 7 1954, when Weenie was 47.  It is not uncommon to have to round up new copies of vital records for a variety of reasons including marriage, passport application, establish identity to pursue estates and so forth.  Whatever the case, it usually indicates some significant life event and is therefore worth noting.  But I am not sure what was happening for Weenie in 1954 that would warrant the need for his birth record.  We may never know but it leaves a little crumb to follow someday.

More interesting to note is that this is a corrected certificate (see upper right corner).  The corrections are noted on the back as seen here:

Perhaps you already knew that Weenie was originally named James Thomas but did you know his birthdate was not originally listed at August 24?!?!?!?!  What if BKTF Day was BKTJ Day a day earlier????  What if what we have always known to be true and celebrated .....wasn't?

Traditionally, families would name the first son after his paternal grandfather--whose name was supposedly Timothy so I'm not really certain where James came from, but Thomas is Barbara's father's name.  That James sitting there is another tantalizing clue to follow someday.  Someday........

Someday When I Go Home

My creativity has been a bit clogged up lately--keeping good company with the dishwasher, washing machine and toilet I guess.  Must be the cold.  I thought I might blog about the difference digital photography has made for me.  I got my digital camera 7 years ago (Feb 2007).  At the time, I was not convinced that I would or could permanently leave film behind, but I was wrong.  My loyalty flew out the window almost as fast as the wind chill dropped this week. 

I was able to use digital photography to record most of Ryan's high school years, and none of Amy's.  Big difference.  As time has gone by, I've been pretty good about getting prints made of the digital pictures I like.  Despite that, I have found it much more difficult to organize my digital pictures than album photos.  The picture library builds and builds as time goes by and I don't have a really good plan in place to organize them and back them up for the future disaster that is certain to occur.

I back up my files to the cloud and further back up my picture files to an external hard drive so they will be available to anyone who might be looking for them Someday.  This leads me to my concern about what will happen to all the family history work I've done over the years.  I use software to record the details (which is backed up regularly) but lots of paper, notes and old pictures are still filed away in their original format.  What's going to happen to this stuff when I'm gone????  It's years and years of work that one of the future descendants will find critical Someday.  I worry about what will happen with this stuff.  Amy and Ryan will be forced to promise to never use it to make a bonfire, but you all need to make a collective promise to keep it safe so that when that future lost cousin comes knocking, it can be handed over in good conscience. 

More on the "Someday" theme, here's another page from Amy's 1997 Someday book that I find especially interesting given her current household residents:

We met Amy in Olean on Sunday so I could finally hand over the remaining Christmas gifts.  I had this vision that I would show Amy the places I remember and talk about Mom and Nanny and Weenie.  HA.  Mom used to like to go to the Beef and Barrel but it was closed on Sundays.  The restaurant I picked blindly on the internet was also closed when we got there.  We ended up at a nearby Mexican place which severely lacked in atmosphere.  But, who cared about atmosphere when we had Christmas gifts to hand over? 

We did have a nice visit with Amy but my desire to drive around and reminisce went out the window almost as fast as that previously mentioned love of 35mm film.  I don't think Amy minded very much.  I was glad enough to see her, hug her and feed her. 

Remember to check the new Gathering the Cousins blog!  One of the podcaster I follow recommends blogging as "cousin bait" so perhaps Someday we'll be found by a long lost cousin--I like that idea.  And if the blog gets visited frequently, it will rise higher in search results when someone looks for us Someday.

Announcing a new blog!

As you may know, the Ryan blog has been a "private" blog since the beginning in order to protect the innocent :)  This has worked out great but I wanted to take it to the next level by creating a public blog through which I could share the research with ALL the cousins out there.  It will also serve to exercise my creativity in writing to a new audience.

I hope to make some new family connections this way.  For now, I plan to re-tell the stories I've already shared on the family blog.  This new public blog will contain stories from the Irish Ryan side as well as the Italian Dalpiaz side.  I hope you enjoy. 

It's called Gathering the Cousins and is at www.GatheringTheCousins.blogspot.com     Spread the word!  Enjoy and comment away. 

"Man Overboard!"

This is the story of a cousin lost at sea.  Ho Hum you might think.  We have several ancestors who have been lost at sea, what's the big deal?  In every person's life there is a story  and this is the story of a hero.

Nanny Ryan's mother Edith was a Handran before she married William Pierce.  This is how we are connected as cousins to John Handran (technically 1st cousins 4 times removed.  First cousins are children of our aunts and uncles (not just strictly our parents siblings, but all the "great", "grand" and other aunts and uncles)  Times removed refers to the number of generations difference between the two. 

John Handran was lost at sea aboard the Schooner Cleopatra Dec 26, 1885.  He left a wife and 3 very young children just a day after Christmas that year.  I don't know how long the fishing trip had been at the time of the accident, but it is certain he and the rest of the crew were not home for Christmas that year.

This is a picture from Frederick Bodin of Good Morning Gloucester of that time period and I like to imagine it reflects what it must have looked like seaside in the 1880s in Gloucester

He calls it "Return of the Fishing Fleet Circa 1800"

The Cleopatra story inspired an epic poem "The Ballad of the Cleopatra" available on Google Books from Cornhill Magazine .  I encourage you to read it when you have a chance as it gives an interesting viewpoint from a fisherman's perspective.  A storm came up and swept 3 men into the ocean, John Handran was one of them.  Another crewman died on the deck.  A distress flag was raised and seen by a Brisith vessel, the Lord Gough.  As they prepared to send a rescue boat, the distress flag was taken down.  The potential rescuers were confused by this but continued their mission.  Apparently the captain and crew of the Cleopatra took down the distress flag so as not to put other sailors in danger by attempting to rescue them.  This seems a very brave decision to me and speaks to the nature of Gloucester fishermen.  The remaining crewmen were rescued and delivered to the Philadelphia port. 

I suspect John understood the dangers of his livelihood all to well and he acted accordingly by taking out an insurance policy on himself from an organization called the Massachusetts Catholic Order of the Foresters.  I ordered copies of their papers for families I thought might be ours and John's were among the papers I received.  They are extensive in detail just like today's insurance companies use our habits to determine risk and calculate cost. The details provide a rich picture of this man and his family.  One of the questions in the medical examination area of the papers asks: "Does the applicant use ardent spirits, beer or tobacco?" John's answer is difficult to decipher as it is smudged, but it is clearly not a simple "No".   He was 5'3" and 132 lbs--not a big guy at all.  This policy was only 5 months old when he died and paid the widow Sarah one thousand dollars. 

These papers also indicate that John's father and two brothers were both "drowned at sea"--the fishing life took a devastating toll on this family.  John's certificate of death from the Order of Foresters says "Handran was drowned at sea.  He was washed from the deck of the vessal and sank after a few moments of struggle. This is the testimony of some of the crew who have come home."  I found these words haunting.

You see, John died at sea as a recipient of a peacetime Medal of Honor awarded by President Ulysses S. Grant for heroism in rescuing a shipmate who was swept off the US Steamer Franklin near Lisbon Portugal in 1876.  From the New York Herald:  ""poor Henry O'Neil seemed about to pay with his life the penalty for having gone to sea without learning to swim" when two sailors "were soon in the water making for the spot.  One of them, Edward Madden, held a rope's end.  The rope proved too short, the icy waters chilled him, to let go the rope was to lose his own life, and he returned.  The other, John Handran, seaman, kept on with vigorous strokes.  This was not the first time he had risked his life to save a shipmate.  As he approached the drowning man with admirable coolness he kept clear of his struggling efforts to clutch, swimming round until he could grasp him with his right hand just so as to keep his mouth above water". 

It seems fated that John should drown at sea, leaving a very proud story for his children and their descendants.  It brings to mind Tim's service in the Coast Guard, for which we are all grateful and proud-- as we are for all in the family who served.  I'm sure John would not have thought his actions were heroic but it's a story that needs to be told after all these years gone by.

As the calendar turns....welcome 2014

A stream of travels and parties has ended so I now have some time to reflect on the new year as well as the year gone by.  Welcome to 2014.  This was the year I intended to retire, but I'm very happy with my decision to retire last year.  2014 is a nice round number but I am very happy to turn the calendar over and say goodbye to 2013.

So this post will be filled with tidbits and reflections.  Stay with me.  For a various reasons, Amy and Michael decided not to come to New York for Christmas this year so we traveled to Erie the weekend before so Santa could put some presents under their tree.  And this is how we were welcomed:

Nice way to treat Santa and his helper. 

But Amy did prepare dinner for us and it was wonderful!  This was the first time and it marks a turning point in a young adult life (as well as for an empty nester).  And here we go--my girl in her own kitchen making dinner for her visiting parents:

We stopped at the zoo and Amy introduced us to two lionesses who've recently moved into a new enclosure.  It was awesome to be nearly face to face with these two beauties.  They seemed to enjoy the company since the zoo's been closed for the winter and they don't have many.  As we started to leave, they began to pace--we went back to them and they settled down.  I think they liked having a food source nearby.  I (foolishly) took no pictures but here's one of Amy's:

They are really very majestic and I'm a sucker for the big cats anyhow. 

We returned from Erie driving in 60 degree plus weather only to turn around a day or so later to go the same 5 hours in the opposite direction to Long Island to spend Christmas with the Dalpiaz clan.  I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of the new babies--this is Robinson who is about 6-7 weeks old celebrating his first Christmas.

At the Ryan Christmas Bash, I was lucky enough to hold Birdie for a while too.  She's about a month older than Robinson and is perfectly beautiful.  I am grateful that Kevin, Sarah and John took the trip to spend the day with us all.  That was a great gift!

We got a great group picture of those attending the party

I am tickled that so many people "liked" this on Facebook and not one asked "Who's the redhead?".  Rich is our favorite photobomber.

We have high hopes for 2014 and wish you the same.  And, as a PS on the "Snail Mail for Millenials" post, I'd like to thank the Post Office for the timeliness of raising the price of the Forever stamp :)